


Lost in the Fade

by korcarihare



Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, almost stream of conciousness, cymbol crash, jazz hands, magical realism!, mostly about disassociation and trauma processing, very short, written w a cousland rogue in mind, you might wanna call it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-27
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-05-29 10:29:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6371275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/korcarihare/pseuds/korcarihare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Worn beyond worn, a grey warden finds solace in the fade and its ability to warp and weave around him.  Inspired by the circle tower fade quest, its awful reputation, and maybe a little of why I can't bring myself to use a "skip the fade" mod.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lost in the Fade

He feels better in the fade. It takes a while for this to sink in. It’s strange, he thinks, absurd, he muses, that he would feel so at home and so liberated here, trapped so far away from all he’s known. But then it dawns on him; hasn’t he been unmoored for a while? Unmoored. Cast adrift. A sad, lonely rowboat. He grins, too much tooth, with bitter amusement.

The fade, he thinks, reminds him of nights in the woods at twilight. Of hunting. Not the hunt itself, not blood, not sweat, not fear and exhilaration. He remembers frozen nights alone in the endless, whispering dark. He remembers crackling brushwood fires, although here the flames cast only the concept of heat, the idea of heat from a source that has never felt it. He remembers the feeling of limitless possibility. Here, he realizes, it is quite literal.

Since he has arrived he has been a mouse, a construct of stone, a lich, and a blazing corpse that never turns to ash. All of these has had that sense to it of curious mimicry, that he is less so much a reality as he is what he thinks this reality should be. There is a sense of himself around this thing he has become, a larger human form phased out into a wisp of a thing towering above his body as a mouse, a fragile thing of meat and bone entombed in earth. Flesh that always sears and never chars away.

He has not felt real, he notes, since…. Slowly, he begins tugging at the knotted twine of memory that he would rather build a pearl over, to cover up and keep from scraping him raw, the gnarled-up fear and hate and loss that itches right below the surface of his skin, the gaping wound he has left untended. His voice has felt hollow to himself ever since. When his white, straining knuckles jut from the hilt of his dagger and it wears grooves into his palm he feels nothing but deadened pressure, the idea, perhaps, of pain.

It is here, where his body can be anything–tiny, insignificant, mighty, towering, frozen, engulfed in flames–where he feels most himself. He cannot decide if this is a grand joke at his expense or a moment of bliss, respite, freedom. Freedom. Once he is gone from here he will be bound by duty once more, bound to tired flesh and weary bone, bound to a body from which he can no longer touch, taste, reach the world outside.

Still, there is work to be done. He presses onward. He must.


End file.
